Phantom debts, real anguish
By CHRIS SERRES and GLENN HOWATT, Star Tribune
Last update: June 30, 2010
The page was mostly blank. It contained only a name, three words and a series of tiny numbers. But in Minnesota's creditor-friendly court system, the page became the sole legal evidence that Darren Sabinske had defaulted on a
Citibank credit card nearly eight years ago.
Sabinske, a security technician from Albertville, was ordered to pay $7,595 to Debt Equities LLC of Golden Valley, whose business is collecting old debts. Sabinske insists he never owned a Citibank card but was soon to learn the frustration of trying to defend himself against a computer database that listed his name near that of the bank.
"All they had was a row of numbers," he said.
In the hands of the new breed of debt collectors, those rows of numbers have become gold mines. Firms with little known names, like LVNV Funding and Unifund CCR Partners, buy massive databases of unpaid debts for cents on the dollar, and then inundate courts with legal actions seeking to collect the full amount, plus interest and fees. These firms, known as debt buyers, base their claims on data up to 15 years old that can be impossible to verify.
http://www.startribune.com/projects/96995289.html
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